Transgender law change support grows

Posted in: New Zealand Daily News
By GayNZ.com Daily News staff - 27th August 2009

MPs from across the main political parties are pledging their support for changes to legislation to improve the legal status of transgender people.

A report based on the groundbreaking Human Rights Commission Transgender Inquiry, titled To Be Who I Am and released early last year, called for changes to laws which currently exclude transgender people from discrimination protection and which require gender reassignment surgery before a person's legal gender identity can be changed.

Genderbridge, an organisation set up to support transgender people, says Auckland Central and National MP Nikki Kaye is the latest to confirm her support for the changes and ACT leader Rodney Hyde has for some months signaled his support. Gay Greens MP Kevin Hague has confirmed that his party's nine MPs are "fully supportive of the proposed changes," according to Genderbridge's Allyson Hamblett.

Justice Minister Simon Power is understood to be supportive and Hamblett says an approach is soon to be made to Prime Minister John Key. The Labour party has long looked favourably on such changes.